


A Rose By Any Other Name

by stonecoldsilly



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sad, a short little sad bastard that haunted me so now it's your problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonecoldsilly/pseuds/stonecoldsilly
Summary: He says, offhand, casually as anything, not even performing his disdain to this audience of two, ‘We’re not friends. This is an associate of mine, Geralt of Rivia.’
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 85
Kudos: 365
Collections: Interesting Character and/or Interesting Relationship Development





	A Rose By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> not sure why i keep cranking out these sad little bastard fics but enjoy!

The innkeeper beams at Jaskier, arms wide in welcome. 

‘It’s truly an honour! We heard you were headed this way and the whole town’s fit to burst with excitement, Master Jaskier’. 

Jaskier smiles back at the innkeeper. A warmer welcome than expected, but his fame has grown exponentially in the year he was apart from the Witcher. He played in courts across the Continent, a triumphant tour culminating in a month’s residence on the largest stage Oxenfurt could offer. Praise and plaudits flung at his feet; a conqueror’s laurels hung on his brow. His peers fought for his attention, maidens swooned in the streets and nobles outbid each other fiercely for his performance at their spoiled daughter's namedays. These accolades were his for the taking years ago, had he not dallied in the wilds with a Witcher. 

He has not played a song about monsters or witchers since the mountain. The songs that inflame the people’s hearts are beautiful ballads and tragic romances, men left weeping into their cups and women longing to catch his eye and be immortalised in song. 

The Witcher songs, though a formidable part of his repertoire, have never been very profitable. It was a labour of love, to slowly shift the perception of a despised minority, to lessen the helpless burden of fury and shame Jaskier felt when his once-friend bore hatred so unflinchingly. 

it worked, as well, though Geralt only ever took it as his due, or a hindrance. 

Now they stand, both welcomed with smiles and open arms, in a warm and inviting inn after a day’s long ride. Both welcomed, where once the Witcher would have been sleeping in the stables and charged double for the privilege. 

If Geralt has ever stopped to consider this change in his fortunes, Jaskier has never heard of it. 

‘And who’s your friend?’ the innkeeper says, pouring Jaskier a pint of frothy Cintran ale so crisp the glass swelters. 

Jaskier does not think before he speaks. He is a year and a mountainside away from giving a shit, and his mind is preoccupied by the refreshment the beading condensation glinting on the rim will offer. 

He says, offhand, casually as anything, not even performing his disdain to this audience of two, ‘We’re not friends. This is an associate of mine, Geralt of Rivia.’

His voice is even, his heart rate steady. He is not lying, that any enhanced senses can tell. He doesn’t even think about it. 

He is raising the ale to his lips; the tankard covers any hint of Geralt’s face in the corner of his eye. 

Geralt’s expression twists and the Witcher misses half of what the innkeeper says to him. 

Someone who had travelled by a Witcher’s side for decades and deciphered every fragment of speech allowed could have caught his honest shock, but Jaskier genuinely does not care to see it. 

He continues talking to the innkeeper, cheerily sharing gossip and joking about the next big town on the road, stoking the local rivalry and flattering this no-name village’s clearly superior taste in music.

It is Jaskier’s bread and butter, and he can charm the birds from the sky. One stout barkeep stands very little chance against the effervescent force of his sheer personality. They are swiftly shown to their rooms, the best the poor man can offer such a famed musician.

Rooms, separate. They have not shared a room, a hearth, a bed, since the mountain. Jaskier has wealth and glory trickling from his fingers. Geralt has an improved reputation that was none of his own doing. 

It is not a conscious and bitter decision in Jaskier’s mind. He has friends in cities across the continent, dear ones, who greet him with shouts of joy and part from him with tears. He has friends he has known longer than the Witcher, shared childhoods and ideals and interests binding deeper than shared campfires. He has friends he has carried up stairs in their cups and fought beside in their battles, been a refuge for in their sorest trials, and they have done the same for him. 

Geralt does not live in the part of his mind marked friend now. He is an acquaintance. One that offers mutual benefits for the both of them. He gains a travel companion, an able bodyguard, though a dour one, on his way through these wilder outskirts of Temeria to the next court he is scheduled to perform at. Geralt gains a barker. No more. No less. 

Jaskier has redefined the boundaries and does not care to blur them again. He does not care. Truly, in his heart, he does not. It is not denial, or bitterness, just the souring of once sweet nostalgia, the fondness dropping away swift enough to surprise even himself. 

Geralt is lost. He stands alone in his fine room, just as alone as he was at Jaskier’s side. 

They reunited two weeks ago, a year and a mountain since Geralt crushed everything he cared for in his own monstrous hands. He had stewed in self-hatred over a long winter at Kaer Morhen, snappish and penitent in turns with his brothers. A late and fierce spring had dawned on the world, and the sweet honey sunlight had set his foolish mind to optimism. 

He had flown on Roach’s back to find Jaskier again, and every village and town passed had seemed to hum his name and his songs. It has seemed as though destiny agreed with him for once. He had apologised, and Jaskier had accepted his apology. But they are not the same. 

Jaskier does not share his thoughts as freely as he once did, merely composing to himself and singing on the road. He speaks to Roach with audible fondness, but his tone is business-like with Geralt in a way that has never been directed at him. They discuss where to camp, the roads, the weather conditions, and nothing more. The soft jokes and warm teasing have disappeared entirely. 

At every inn they stopped at, in a previous life, he was with Jaskier, the two of them a team against any threat they faced, companions together and the world a grand joke for their perusal. The bard invited him into his confidences, and they knew what the other planned with less than a look. Jaskier could singlehandedly turn the tide of any bar fight simply by knowing where Geralt would need his aid most, dancing round each other seamlessly, escaping town guards or mercenaries together with breathless laughter. Their routine for dealing with recalcitrant townsfolk was so practiced that on their approach Jaskier would call out ‘a seven with extra pitchforks’ and Geralt would have to school his face to avoid creasing up with laughter atop Roach’s back. 

He is alone now, and he was alone downstairs with Jaskier right next to him, and alone this past fortnight with Jaskier travelling beside him, and alone ever since the mountain. 

He does not know how to fix this. 

If this is how Jaskier felt every time Geralt said-snapped-growled that they were not friends, then he cannot say it is not well earned. He hopes it is not true. Jaskier’s heart did not speed up, he did not betray any signs of falsehood that Geralt could sense, and at that moment his whole blazing being was focused on the bard. He would not have missed it.

He shivers, once. The restless urge to action clamps its jaws around him, that impenetrable adrenaline that ensures a Witcher will always tend to fight, not flight, vibrates through him, and he is knocking on Jaskier’s well-kept door before he knows it. 

The bard lets him in, and the faintly puzzled expression he wears betrays nothing. 

‘What is it?’

Geralt’s bones hum with the call to movement, and he does not let himself stop to think, or get in his own way. 

‘You said, downstairs. That we aren’t friends.’

Jaskier has the gall to look slightly bored. No. Not bored. Disdainful. 

‘We’re not friends.’ 

Hearing it again settles nothing, only sharpens Geralt’s attention. Every sense he can trust, enhanced at the highest cost he has ever known, is focused on Jaskier now. The bard is telling the truth, as he knows it. 

‘Why?’

That is all he manages to get out. Sorrow rushes over him, waterfall thick, and he is shocked at how hurt three words can make him feel, even after everything else he has borne. The hurt is real, and painful, and his eyes sting and his throat closes and he cannot look at Jaskier anymore, shielding his pained expression. 

Jaskier sits, no, lounges on the bed. 

‘What’s my name?’ He says, idly. 

This pulls a baffled ‘What?’ from Geralt, startled into speech. 

‘If we are friends, what is my real name?’

He stares at Jaskier, and frantically digs through twenty years of memories. 

He stares at the bard on the bed, lazily strumming his lute, and wracks his brain for any hint. 

He stares at the man whose name he does not know, and shame guts him worse than any monster. 

‘In twenty years, you have not asked. And so, for twenty years I have not told you.’

Jaskier meets his eyes then, and the warmth that once shone there is gone completely. 

‘Close the door on your way out.’

Jaskier makes a note in his workbook and begins the song again. 

Geralt closes the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> this may someday have another chapter added, with a happy ending... rumplestiltskin-style


End file.
